Passing protractors

This isn't about crazies, but I just wrote it for my G+ and it occurred to me that it would make sense to share it here too:

Y'know, it's funny the memories that stick. Tiny little things that were important.  In my Year 9 SATs, around 13 years ago now, John passed me his protractor.

We were taking the higher maths paper and there were only about five of us.  The school hall was set up to accommodate a regular sized exam, so it was full of tables and chairs in rows, and there was a weird atmosphere when we got there.  Me and Jenny and John and I don't remember who the other two were. John was the undisputed maths genius of the year.  He was just John the rest of the time, lanky, spotty, his voice had been mid-breaking for what seemed like forever, he wasn't popular but he wasn't picked on.  He was part of the group. But everyone know he kicked ass at maths. The rest of us were just the people that were top in everything, we had no special aptitude for maths in particular.  

We didn't hang out as a group, and it felt odd to have just us few together for an exam.  Me and John weren't really friends.  I don't mean we disliked each other, or even that we were in different friendship groups.  We were in the same friendship group, we just... never really talked.  I had a bit of a weird relationship with boys back then still anyway - they were kind of an alien species, and I mostly had crushes on them from afar - but I had a friendship of sorts with Chris and Nicky and Dave.  We could talk about stuff sometimes, I walked home the same way as Chris and Dave sometimes, and me and Nicky even had long phone conversations.  But me and John never clicked.  He was painfully shy, which didn't help.  He was friends with Jenny though, they hung out all the time. And I still hung out with Jenny quite a bit then too.  So sometimes the three of us would hang out. But somehow it was still me hanging out with Jenny, and John hanging out with Jenny.  Just at the same time.  

So it's the day of the maths exam and we're in the room between the cafeteria and the hall, where the cubby holes and coat-hooks are, putting away our bags and getting out our calculators and pencil cases.  I wasn't really well prepared - organisation wasn't my strong suit. Nor was pretty much anyone.  We'd had so many exams over that week we'd gotten kind of blase about them.  I had writing implements and my calculator. I might have had a pair of compasses? Not sure.

The time came, and we filed in in silence, John first, then me and then the others. They'd placed the papers on a single column of tables by the exit.  It didn't feel like a real exam, given how few of us there were, and the teachers weren't really treating it as one either.  They told us no talking, no mobiles, but didn't bother with the spiel, just let us sit down and get on with it. 

So we did.  And halfway through I hit the question that required a protractor.  We never needed a protractor.  It just didn't come up.  Ever.  But bam, there it was.  So I left it for the time being and moved on. I was about three quarters of the way through when I heard my name whispered and looked up to see John looking back at me. He looked back to the front and then nonchalantly passed his protractor back to me.  

The teachers weren't paying attention, and christ, we were hardly cheating anyway, but it FELT like such a huge deal.  They made a huge fuss out of telling us ANY communication would lead to being failed not just for that exam, but ALL of your exams, just in case you'd cheated in them too. And it just didn't seem like John to take a risk like that, especially not in maths, and especially not for me.  

I took the protractor.  I used it.  I passed it backwards.  It travelled down the whole group, as no one but John had remembered to bring one.  I don't know if the teachers saw but didn't care, or if we were sufficiently sneaky about it. But not a word was said.  

I just remember that feeling of suddenly being linked.  We were now a group.   It was pretty fucking rare at that point for me to feel properly part of a group, not just tolerated, not the outsider.  We were all in it together.  And John made us that group, and made me part of it.  And that meant a quite disproportionate amount to me, so much so that I still feel happy when I remember it.  Hell, so much so that I still remember it, despite my sieve-like memory, despite not knowing what I got in that exam, despite having had to piece together all the external pieces of where it was and why and what was happening.

It's just one of the moments that mean nothing and a great deal all at once, so I thought I would share it with you all.